Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Valley News

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PORTLAND, Maine — There once was a tune that tickled the Internet’s fancy/When TikTok revived the humble sea shanty/The views came fast, the fad could last/Go, read about it go:

People are stuck at home, toiling away, getting bored, going stir crazy.

Cooped-up sailors who felt the same way on long ocean journeys broke up the tedium with work songs called sea shanties.

It only makes sense, then, that shanties have come full circle with a moment of unprecedented popularity during the pandemic.

“Times are tough. If we can sing, it’ll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships,” said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea shanties aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.

TikTok helped sea shanties surge into the mainstream.

The app has a duet feature that lets people create a 60-second song and then allows others to add their voices.

People began using the feature to record sea shanties, and shantying quickly became a mainstream thing, starting last month. The ShantyTok movement has even contributed to a rendition by the Longest Johns of the centuries old “Wellerman” sailing into the United Kingdom’s Top 40 chart. Another version by Nathan Evans with a driving beat reached No. 2 at midweek.

The sudden popularity isn’t so hard to fathom. After all, people are craving interaction during the pandemic, and shanties are group efforts that don’t require great singing skills — though some of the TikToks are quite sophisticated and elaborate.

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

Shanties and sea songs are lumped together in the trend, but true shanties were work songs. Sailors of yore sang to pass the time and to coordinate their efforts in hoisting sails and anchors, and manning the bilge pumps.

They generally consist of a chorus — in “Wellerman,” it’s about a ship loaded with “sugar, tea and rum” — that’s easy to memorize. There might be formal lyrics, or participants might choose to ad lib, with others joining for the chorus, said Matthew Baya, a radio show host from Williamstown, Mass.

The shanties helped sailors defuse tension and remain sane amid the cruelty of isolation and cramped quarters. Shanties sometimes involved good-natured insults at skippers or the shipping companies that employed them.

Vocal chops are a bonus, but not a necessity.

“Not all sailors kept perfect pitch. They weren’t in that job for their musical talent,” Baya said. “You’ll get some people who are really talented, and other people who’re just having fun but may not hit all of the right notes.”

Many people who sing sea shanties at local festivals in Mystic, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts, and other seaport locations across the U.S. are thrilled by the sudden attention. Shanties are even more popular in some parts of Europe.

“If people are having fun singing, that’s got to be good,” said Baya, one of the hosts of the “Saturday Morning Coffee House” on WERU-FM in Blue Hill, Maine. His show often includes a shanty or two.

Many workers are stuck inside and alone/A sense of whimsy can throw them a bone/Because of that, the shanty trend has shone/So sing, sing as you go

Shanties tend to be associated with England, which ruled the seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But they’re sung from Maine, where English colonists began a shipbuilding tradition, to Massachusetts, home of the nation’s whaling fleet, down to Alabama’s Mobile Bay, the Caribbean and all the way around the world, Konesni said.

They’re work songs like the ones sung by enslaved people harvesting crops in the South, miners chipping away deep underground and loggers felling trees in the woods, all of which are seeing renewed attention thanks to shanties, said Konesni, who’s a cultural ambassador for the State Department and has performed shanties around the world.

The trend is a refreshing one in a world that has become accustomed to people performing on a stage for a crowd, Konesni said.

Shanties are different because they’re participatory. The audience is encouraged to boisterously sing along.

“It’s got a depth, history and singability that a lot of pop songs don’t,” he said.

Geoff Kaufman, who made a living singing sea shanties and directed the Sea Music Festival at the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, said he’s amused and intrigued by the sudden fascination with shanties.

He loves the idea of a new generation lifting their voices.

“I hope it brings more young people into the fold,” he said.

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

The Link Lonk


February 01, 2021 at 08:16AM
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Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Valley News

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Viral sea shanties on TikTok exposes America's broken copyright system - Business Insider - Business Insider

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• The sea shanty craze on TikTok shows how exciting it is when a wide range of creators can collaborate to build something entirely new. 
• But most copyright laws weren't designed with social platforms and virality in mind.
• Rightsholders have lobbied for longer and broader copyrights that provide the basis for high-profile lawsuits that threaten to limit the "creative space" for contemporary artists.
• Christopher Buccafusco is director of the Intellectual Property & Information Law Program at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When Nathan Evans, a 26-year-old Scottish postal worker, began uploading videos of himself singing sea shanties to TikTok several months ago, "going viral" may not have been on his mind. But as with all stories of virality, the beginning is less important than what happened next. 

The 19th-century sailors' songs that blended European and African melodies and rhythms with lyrics about life at sea are now the internet's biggest musical sensation. And their popularity shows us what's great about contemporary culture and creativity, and what's wrong with modern copyright law.

Origin of the sea shanty craze

When Evans' rendition of "The Wellerman," a 19th-century New Zealand whaling song, caught fire, first one TikToker and then another recorded themselves singing different vocal parts on top of Evans. Within a few days, a dozen people who had never met in person, singing thousands of miles from one another during the height of a global pandemic, had recorded a beautiful tune that has been enjoyed by millions of others. 

I love these sea shanties, not just because they've brought me enormous happiness during a pretty dark period of human and personal history, but because of how they illustrate some important themes about contemporary creativity.

Creativity is collaborative 

First, creativity is and always has been multivocal. We tend to focus on the artistic genius of individual creators, but virtually all successful creativity represents a blend of different people's talents. Although it's tempting to criticize a singer for not writing her own songs, no one complains that John Wayne didn't write his own lines. Creativity is a shared enterprise.

And creativity isn't just shared across space but also across time. Too often, when we think of past creativity, we focus only on a small handful of "classics" that have enduring value into the present. But the past — or as we copyright nerds call it, the public domain — is an enormous trove of creative opportunity waiting to be rediscovered.

• Read more: The problem with the Emmy attention for 'Ramy'
• The sea shanty craze has also demonstrated that contemporary creativity is often very cheap to make and distribute. Our phones have high quality mics and cameras, and even higher quality versions can be cheaply purchased online. And digital editing software allows people to create tracks and videos with a few minutes of swiping. Then, once made, creators can share their content with billions of people freely and instantaneously.

These conditions differ from those that existed when most of our copyright laws were enacted. Hours of studio time and expensive editing equipment were needed to produce albums that then had to be stamped on vinyl or etched onto CDs. If the album was a flop, all of those expenses were wasted. 

Copyright law is broken

Rightsholders like Disney have used these arguments to lobby for longer and broader copyrights that lock up more of the past for longer periods. Copyrights now last for the length of an author's life plus 70 more years — far longer than needed to recoup the costs of contemporary creativity. 

But copyright law does get one part of creativity right. For over a century, musicians have been allowed to record other people's songs without their prior consent if they pay them a royalty. Copyright law calls these "mechanical recordings" after their origin in player piano rolls, but we know them as cover songs. So while Taylor Swift's songs will probably still be subject to copyright in the year 2200, people will be able to re-record them, in sea shanty versions if they like, if they pay her heirs a small fee. 

Unfortunately, most of copyright law doesn't work so well. Illogically, recording an entire song is cheap and easy, but incorporating a portion of someone's song requires negotiating what could be a very expensive license — or risking copyright infringement. 

Consider the practice of "beat leasing." Musicians create beats that they let other artists borrow for a reasonable fee. Most of these leases are nonexclusive, which means that lots of artists can work with the same underlying beat. Recently, however, indie musician Caleb Hearn learned that the beat he had leased for a song that became a viral TikTok sensation had been bought out by a record label to compel him to sign with them. Thanks to copyright, an opportunity for sharing between multiple creators is undermined by an assertion of ownership.

Copyright is premised on the notion of exclusion — that copyright owners need exclusive rights to copy and distribute their content. But songs, like bottles of rum, are meant to be passed around. Platforms like TikTok allow unknown creators from around the world to come together cheaply and easily. Too often, copyright locks the booze away and only lets the captain get drunk.

The Link Lonk


January 31, 2021 at 05:28PM
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Viral sea shanties on TikTok exposes America's broken copyright system - Business Insider - Business Insider

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Labour demands ban on North Sea gas flaring - Financial Times

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The Labour party has called for a ban on UK North Sea oil operators burning or releasing gas “except in dire safety emergencies” after data showed the contentious practice of “flaring and venting” in the region is responsible for a coal plant’s worth of carbon emissions each year. 

Campaign group Greenpeace UK will on Monday publish a report that for the first time names and shames the oil operators in British waters that are responsible for the most emissions from flaring and venting.

A joint venture between Spain’s Repsol and Sinopec of China is identified as the operator responsible for the most emissions, followed by France’s Total and Royal Dutch Shell.

Norway outlawed non-emergency flaring 50 years ago — but the practice of burning off gas produced together with oil from reservoirs is still common in UK waters.

This is especially the case at older oilfields where the original operators were not concerned about capturing the less valuable gas and in other locations where there are no nearby pipelines to export it, although many of the larger producers such as Shell, Repsol and Total have in recent years committed to tackle the problem as part of net zero targets.

It is also done for safety reasons or for non-routine operations such as testing wells, although Britain’s energy regulator found in a report last year that only about 10 per cent of gas flared in the UK North Sea in 2019 was for emergency reasons only. The World Bank is campaigning for routine flaring to end globally by 2030.

Norway tackled this problem in the 1970s, but our government is clearly asleep at the wheel and is failing to regulate the industry

The report by Greenpeace’s investigative unit Unearthed shows that total venting and flaring by oilfield operators in the UK North Sea released emissions equivalent to 20m tonnes of carbon dioxide between the start of 2015 — the year of the Paris climate accord — and the end of 2019. It is based on data obtained via environmental freedom of information requests from the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory, part of Britain’s business department.

The average annual total of 4m tonnes equates to the same damage caused by a coal-fired power plant, which ministers have promised to phase out no later than 2025.

“Norway tackled this problem in the 1970s, but our government is clearly asleep at the wheel and is failing to regulate the industry,” said Mel Evans of Greenpeace UK.

The data cover those oil companies that operate platforms and excludes others that only hold stakes in fields. They also do not cover flaring per barrel of oil produced, but still shed an important light on the industry’s emissions as it comes under increasing pressure to justify its future against the UK's legally binding 2050 net zero emissions target.

Ministers and the industry are negotiating a North Sea “transition deal”, which is expected to be published soon.

Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said the government must “stop turning a blind eye” to venting and flaring in anything other than “dire safety emergencies”, adding that it “undermines our international credibility” as the UK prepares to host the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November.

Climate Capital

Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here 

The UK Oil and Gas Authority, which is responsible for policing North Sea companies, insisted it was taking a “robust stance” on venting and flaring.

It published a report last year that found volumes of gas vented and flared fell between 2018 and 2019, but the regulator added there were “clear opportunities for industry to go further to advance cleaner production”.

The business department said it was working alongside regulators “to ensure this practice is eliminated as soon as possible”, pointing out the UK had signed up to the World Bank’s plan for a 2030 ban.

Repsol Sinopec said it had reduced flaring and venting by more than 34 per cent between 2018 and 2020 and was forecasting a further 10 per cent cut this year.

Total pointed out it had committed to reaching net zero emissions across its global operations by 2050 or sooner, adding that it had set additional “challenging” interim targets in the UK.

Shell said between 2015 and 2019 it achieved a 19 per cent reduction in the overall emissions from its UK upstream business, which included gas vented or flared, adding: “Minimising venting and flaring matters to us and we are working hard to tackle this important issue.”

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February 01, 2021 at 07:05AM
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Labour demands ban on North Sea gas flaring - Financial Times

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Sea lions are dying from a mysterious cancer. - Los Angeles Times

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On a former Cold War missile base perched high above the Golden Gate Bridge, in what is now the largest marine mammal hospital in the world, Frances Gulland still remembers the shock she felt when she first started working here as a veterinarian 26 years ago.

A male sea lion had washed ashore in severe pain. His hind flippers were swollen, his lymph nodes riddled with tumors. Cancer had taken over his kidneys and turned his spine to mush. First responders at the Marine Mammal Center told Gulland they saw this in sea lions all the time.

“Wildlife should not be getting cancer like this, that’s crazy!” said Gulland, who was new to California. “How can that be?”

Now, after two decades of study, an all-star team of marine mammal pathologists, virology experts, chemists and geneticists say they’ve connected two surprising culprits: Herpes and toxic chemicals, like DDT and PCBs, that poisoned the California coast decades ago.

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The ocean is clearly hurting, researchers say, and this mysterious cancer in so many sea lions carries a troubling warning for humans.

“Sea lions, they’re coming up on the beach, using the same waters that we swim and surf in, eating a lot of the same seafood that we eat,” said Gulland, who has served on the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission since the Obama administration and is now a research associate at UC Davis. “They’re predisposed to cancer by these high levels of legacy compounds that are still in the environment — and we are also exposed to these chemicals.”

Marine mammals, like humans, nurse their young and live relatively long lives. Their long-term health is a window into the lasting impacts of chronic exposure to the many chemicals humans have introduced to the sea. They accumulate toxins in their blubber and get sick from the same kinds of viruses that affect humans.

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So the more we understand how certain environmental conditions can turn a seemingly minor disease into widespread cancer in sea lions, the more we might know how to prevent similar cancers from metastasizing in humans. Is there a way, for example, to prevent cervical cancer — a life-threatening disease that starts with a simple infection of human papillomavirus (HPV) — from proliferating in women?

Scientists in California first noticed the sea lion cancer decades ago, at a time when the ocean seemed too big to fail. Factories were still churning out DDT, a pesticide so powerful that it poisoned birds and fish. Barrels of industrial trash, radioactive materials, oil refinery waste, rotting meats and various acid sludges also got dumped into the sea.

To date, almost 25% of the sea lions that first responders bring to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito have died from this one aggressive cancer — among the highest prevalence of a single type of cancer in any mammal, including humans.

Gulland and her team had their suspicions — the nation’s largest DDT manufacturer had dumped its waste not far from the Channel Islands, where many of the sea lions in California breed and feed their pups. There were also signs in their reproductive organs that a sexually transmitted disease might somehow be involved.

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But to confirm this, Gulland needed more data — and sea lions, particularly healthy ones, aren’t exactly coming in for doctor’s appointments. So for more than 20 years, she examined every sea lion that she could not save — whether from cancer, a shark bite, net entanglement or brain damage from harmful algal blooms. Her team measured each animal with a standardized set of metrics, ran blood tests and sampled blubber from the same spot over the sternum. They swabbed and dissected immense amounts of healthy tissue, tumorous tissue, reproductive organs and kidneys.

Barbie Halaska, right, necropsy manager at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, and lab assistant Jackie Isbell measure a California sea lion that was euthanized due to untreatable cancer.

(Bill Hunnewell / Marine Mammal Center)

All told, Gulland catalogued 394 sea lions — an unusually comprehensive dataset for such an elusive species. She and a team of scientists adjusted blubber calculations to account for weight loss in sick animals. They systematically ruled out inbreeding and other possible causes.

Patterns emerged. A previously unknown herpes virus was clearly triggering the cancer. The team also confirmed, in a study published recently in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, that sea lions with higher concentrations of DDT, PCBs and other decades-old chemicals in their blubber were more prone to having the cancer take over their bodies.

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“It is extraordinary, the level of pollutants in these animals in California. It is a big factor in why we’re seeing this level of cancer,” said Pádraig Duignan, chief pathologist at the Marine Mammal Center and a co-author of the study. He had previously studied sea lions in New Zealand, which have minuscule amounts of DDT compared with what he’s seeing in California.

“With all the dumping since the Second World War, right up to the 1970s, that’s a lot of stuff out there,” Duignan said. “These legacy chemicals haven’t broken down anything appreciable in intervening years, and nobody knows if they ever will. This is something that they’re going to have to be exposed to for who knows how long.”

Frances Gulland watches over a California sea lion undergoing an electroencephalogram (EEG) test at the Marine Mammal Center to determine the impact of domoic acid poisoning on the animal’s brain.

(Marine Mammal Center )

Cancer is rare in wild animals. The only similar example of widespread cancer that has been scientifically documented in sea mammals seems to be in a beluga whale population in the St. Lawrence estuary in Canada. The river there had been contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, produced by local aluminum smelters. Cancer was identified in 27% of the adult whales that were found dead and examined. But after the pollution went down, researchers noted, the cancer went away.

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In California, persistent chemicals like DDT remain in the environment, both on the seafloor and working their way back up the food chain in fish and other critters of the sea. Efforts to clean up this mess — a complicated and difficult process — have languished for years.

Eunha Hoh, an environmental health scientist at San Diego State University‘s School of Public Health, was struck by how clearly the sea lion research, which she was not affiliated with, connected cancer to these supposedly historic chemicals. Hoh, too, has continued to find significant amounts of these pollutants in Southern California dolphins and other animals she has studied.

It took more than four decades after these chemicals were banned to prove their connection to the health problems that scientists already suspected, said Hoh, whose work focuses on emerging contaminants in wildlife and humans. So what about all the pesticides, flame retardants and other chemical byproducts still in use today that aren’t well regulated or monitored?

Going forward, researchers see the need to collaborate with more human oncologists. Further study of how exactly certain chemicals predispose sea lions to cancer could also inform our understanding of how secondary factors — such as smoking or exposure to pollutants that interfere with our immune systems — push cancer growth in humans, said Alissa Deming, director of clinical medicine at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center based in Laguna Beach.

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Human cancer research tends to rely on mice in more controlled lab environments, said Deming, who, as chair of the Sea Lion Cancer Consortium, has been making sure that the various sea lion research efforts across the globe are working together to build off of one another’s work.

“People aren’t lab rats, and neither are sea lions — they live their lives, they’re exposed to different stressors in the environment and lots of different infectious diseases,” she said. “Being able to study them as a model that more truly represents how cancer develops, how cancer spreads, is going to be major.”

The Link Lonk


January 31, 2021 at 09:00PM
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Sea lions are dying from a mysterious cancer. - Los Angeles Times

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Sea chanteys are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Eagle-Tribune

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There once was a tune that tickled the Internet's fancy/ When TikTok revived the humble sea chantey/ The views came fast, the fad could last/ Go, read about it, go:

___

People are stuck at home, toiling away, getting bored, going stir crazy.

Cooped-up sailors who felt the same way on long ocean journeys broke up the tedium with work songs called sea chanteys.

It only makes sense, then, that chanteys have come full circle with a moment of unprecedented popularity during the pandemic.

“Times are tough. If we can sing, it’ll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships,” said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea chanteys aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.

TikTok helped sea chanteys surge into the mainstream.

The app has a duet feature that lets people create a 60-second song and then allows others to add their voices.

People began using the feature to record sea chanteys, and chanteying quickly became a mainstream thing, starting last month. The ShantyTok movement has even contributed to a rendition by the Longest Johns of the centuries-old “Wellerman” sailing into the United Kingdom's Top 40 chart. Another version by Nathan Evans with a driving beat reached No. 2 at midweek.

The sudden popularity isn’t so hard to fathom. After all, people are craving interaction during the pandemic, and chanteys are group efforts that don’t require great singing skills — though some of the TikToks are quite sophisticated and elaborate.

___

Long live the work song’s run/ To bring us a sense of glee and fun/ One day, when the pandemic is done/ Back to the office we’ll go

___

Chanteys and sea songs are lumped together in the trend, but true chanteys were work songs. Sailors of yore sang to pass the time and to coordinate their efforts in hoisting sails and anchors, and manning the bilge pumps.

They generally consist of a chorus — in “Wellerman,” it’s about a ship loaded with “sugar, tea and rum” — that’s easy to memorize. There might be formal lyrics, or participants might choose to ad lib, with others joining for the chorus, said Matthew Baya, a radio show host from Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The chanteys helped sailors defuse tension and remain sane amid the cruelty of isolation and cramped quarters. Chanteys sometimes involved good-natured insults at skippers or the shipping companies that employed them.

Vocal chops are a bonus, but not a necessity.

“Not all sailors kept perfect pitch. They weren’t in that job for their musical talent,” Baya said. “You’ll get some people who are really talented, and other people who’re just having fun but may not hit all of the right notes.”

Many people who sing sea chanteys at local festivals in Mystic, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts; and other seaport locations across the U.S. are thrilled by the sudden attention. Chanteys are even more popular in some parts of Europe.

“If people are having fun singing, that’s got to be good,” said Baya, one of the hosts of the “Saturday Morning Coffee House” on WERU-FM in Blue Hill, Maine. His show often includes a chantey or two.

___

Many workers are stuck inside and alone/ A sense of whimsy can throw them a bone/ Because of that, the chantey trend has shone/ So sing, sing as you go

___

Chanteys tend to be associated with England, which ruled the seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But they’re sung from Maine, where English colonists began a shipbuilding tradition, to Massachusetts, home of the nation’s whaling fleet, down to Alabama's Mobile Bay, the Caribbean and all the way around the world, Konesni said.

They’re work songs like the ones sung by enslaved people harvesting crops in the South, miners chipping away deep underground and loggers felling trees in the woods, all of which are seeing renewed attention thanks to chanteys, said Konesni, who’s a cultural ambassador for the State Department and has performed chanteys around the world.

The trend is a refreshing one in a world that has become accustomed to people performing on a stage for a crowd, Konesni said.

Chanteys are different because they’re participatory. The audience is encouraged to boisterously sing along.

“It’s got a depth, history and singability that a lot of pop songs don’t,” he said.

Geoff Kaufman, who made a living singing sea chanteys and directed the Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, said he’s amused and intrigued by the sudden fascination with chanteys.

He loves the idea of a new generation lifting their voices.

“I hope it brings more young people into the fold,” he said.

___

Long live the work song’s run/ To bring us a sense of glee and fun/ One day, when the pandemic is done/ Back to the office we’ll go

___

Associated Press writer Mallika Sen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

The Link Lonk


January 31, 2021 at 09:00PM
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Sea chanteys are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Eagle-Tribune

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Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - WHNT News 19

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — There once was a tune that tickled the Internet’s fancy/When TikTok revived the humble sea shanty/The views came fast, the fad could last/Go, read about it go:

___

People are stuck at home, toiling away, getting bored, going stir crazy.

Cooped-up sailors who felt the same way on long ocean journeys broke up the tedium with work songs called sea shanties.

It only makes sense, then, that shanties have come full circle with a moment of unprecedented popularity during the pandemic.

“Times are tough. If we can sing, it’ll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships,” said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea shanties aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.

TikTok helped sea shanties surge into the mainstream.

The app has a duet feature that lets people create a 60-second song and then allows others to add their voices.

People began using the feature to record sea shanties, and shantying quickly became a mainstream thing, starting last month. The ShantyTok movement has even contributed to a rendition by the Longest Johns of the centuries old “Wellerman” sailing into the United Kingdom’s Top 40 chart. Another version by Nathan Evans with a driving beat reached No. 2 at midweek.

The sudden popularity isn’t so hard to fathom. After all, people are craving interaction during the pandemic, and shanties are group efforts that don’t require great singing skills — though some of the TikToks are quite sophisticated and elaborate.

___

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

___

Shanties and sea songs are lumped together in the trend, but true shanties were work songs. Sailors of yore sang to pass the time and to coordinate their efforts in hoisting sails and anchors, and manning the bilge pumps.

They generally consist of a chorus — in “Wellerman,” it’s about a ship loaded with “sugar, tea and rum” — that’s easy to memorize. There might be formal lyrics, or participants might choose to ad lib, with others joining for the chorus, said Matthew Baya, a radio show host from Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The shanties helped sailors defuse tension and remain sane amid the cruelty of isolation and cramped quarters. Shanties sometimes involved good-natured insults at skippers or the shipping companies that employed them.

Vocal chops are a bonus, but not a necessity.

“Not all sailors kept perfect pitch. They weren’t in that job for their musical talent,” Baya said. “You’ll get some people who are really talented, and other people who’re just having fun but may not hit all of the right notes.”

Many people who sing sea shanties at local festivals in Mystic, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts, and other seaport locations across the U.S. are thrilled by the sudden attention. Shanties are even more popular in some parts of Europe.

“If people are having fun singing, that’s got to be good,” said Baya, one of the hosts of the “Saturday Morning Coffee House” on WERU-FM in Blue Hill, Maine. His show often includes a shanty or two.

___

Many workers are stuck inside and alone/A sense of whimsy can throw them a bone/Because of that, the shanty trend has shone/So sing, sing as you go

___

Shanties tend to be associated with England, which ruled the seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But they’re sung from Maine, where English colonists began a shipbuilding tradition, to Massachusetts, home of the nation’s whaling fleet, down to Alabama’s Mobile Bay, the Caribbean and all the way around the world, Konesni said.

They’re work songs like the ones sung by enslaved people harvesting crops in the South, miners chipping away deep underground and loggers felling trees in the woods, all of which are seeing renewed attention thanks to shanties, said Konesni, who’s a cultural ambassador for the State Department and has performed shanties around the world.

The trend is a refreshing one in a world that has become accustomed to people performing on a stage for a crowd, Konesni said.

Shanties are different because they’re participatory. The audience is encouraged to boisterously sing along.

“It’s got a depth, history and singability that a lot of pop songs don’t,” he said.

Geoff Kaufman, who made a living singing sea shanties and directed the Sea Music Festival at the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, said he’s amused and intrigued by the sudden fascination with shanties.

He loves the idea of a new generation lifting their voices.

“I hope it brings more young people into the fold,” he said.

___

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

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January 31, 2021 at 09:45AM
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Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - WHNT News 19

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Lifeguards rescue beached sea turtle in Manhattan Beach - KABC-TV

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MANHATTAN BEACH (KABC) -- Lifeguards came to the rescue of a beached sea turtle in Manhattan Beach on Friday.

Los Angeles County lifeguards rushed to the aid of an endangered Pacific ridley sea turtle that was resting on the shoreline.

Together with the help of marine animal rescue, they were able to lift the turtle onto a rescue vehicle and transport it to safety.

Young mountain lion discovered in Santa Monica Mountains

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January 31, 2021 at 05:45AM
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Lifeguards rescue beached sea turtle in Manhattan Beach - KABC-TV

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Sea

Research suggests warmer oceans are killing sea stars in Puget... - Kent Reporter

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Recent research conducted at Cornell University might help us understand an illness that has decimated sea star populations for nearly a decade.

Melissa Miner, research associate in the Puget Sound for University of California, Santa Cruz, said Sea Star Wasting Syndrome (SSWS) has been confusing scientists and natural observers since it was first documented off the coast of the Olympic National Park around 2013.

People are shocked at how widespread the illness had become, she said, as SSWS has now been observed as far north as Alaska and as far south as Mexico with more than 20 species of echinoderms being affected thus far.

SSWS can be recognized by the lesions, often soft and oozing, on the flesh and tissue of an affected sea star. A sea star with SSWS can waste away in a matter of days as its limbs will eventually fall off.

Miner said SSWS has wiped out 70-100 percent of sea star populations in certain areas. In regions like the Salish Sea and the Puget Sound, she said young sea star populations are not showing recovery.

Sarah Gravem, research associate at Oregon State University, has been an ecological surveyor whose work has helped get the Sunflower Sea Star listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Her study utilized more than 61,000 surveys from across the West Coast and found that Sunflower Sea Star populations had decreased by more than 90 percent globally since the SSWD outbreak with an estimated 100 percent decline in Oregon and a 99 percent decline in Washington.

She said Sunflower Sea Stars used to be “common” and easy to find among beaches and intertidal zones across the West Coast.

“It is fairly clear that [SSWS] is the main driver,” Gravem said. “Without it, Sunflower Sea Stars would not be on the list.”

Gravem said sea stars are a keystone species in their marine ecosystems, meaning they play an important role in controlling and balancing the populations of other marine species.

For example, sea stars are an important predator of the sea urchin, which if unchecked will over-engorge themselves on kelp forests that Gravem said are already unhealthy amid warming water temperatures.

Not only are sea urchins more plentiful as SSWS kills off one of their main predators, but Gravem said the sea urchins also behave boldly and feed more aggressively on growing kelp.

“I don’t think we will see [sea stars] come back for decades,” she said. “And that’s not good for kelp.”

Warmer oceans?

Scientists and researchers have been working to understand the nature of this illness and its potential causes since the beginning of its outbreak.

Coincidentally, the SSWS began at a time where oceanic water temperatures were recorded at record highs. A 2016 study linked increased temperatures with increased symptoms of SSWS and faster rates of death for sea stars.

Warmer water temperatures were shown to exacerbate the effects of SSWS, but researchers like Gravem still believed SSWS was a disease caused by a transmissible pathogen and that warm waters were not the cause of the epidemic, but rather a factor that made it worse.

Cornell researcher Ian Hewson has been studying SSWS and trying to understand its cause for years. Hewson said he is at the point where he is convinced that it is not an infectious disease, and is more closely related to the changing conditions of the ocean.

Hewson admitted that SSWS “looks and smells” like a transmissible pathogenic event, but his experimentation suggests otherwise.

One experiment that he said excluded the possibility of a virus involved injecting the blended tissue of sea stars that had died of SSWS into healthy sea stars to see if they would contract the virus.

Hewson said the healthy sea stars did die, but despite viruses being more pronounced in infected tissues, there was no virus in the sea stars that they could associate with SSWS.

However, Hewson believes a more recent study of his might have helped unlock some understanding of what SSWS could be.

He said that extreme marine weather events beginning in 2013 brought water from deeper parts of the ocean to shallower marine habitats where sea stars were plentiful.

These waters originating from the ocean’s depths are rich with organic nutrients that phytoplankton love, and Hewson said this causes large algal blooms across the coast. Through the respiratory process, algae and phytoplankton release dissolved organic matter that attract microbial cultures.

Hewson said this drastic increase in microbial life creates low-oxygen dead zones not only around the sea stars’ habitat, but also on the surface of their bodies.

Sea stars, which diffuse oxygen through their skin, are left unable to breathe in the low-oxygen environment not only created by the increased microbial life, but also by the increase in water temperatures.

According to Hewson, the lesions and deterioration of tissues on the wasting sea stars are likely caused as the sea stars are deprived of enough oxygen for their metabolism to properly function.

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January 31, 2021 at 04:30AM
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Research suggests warmer oceans are killing sea stars in Puget... - Kent Reporter

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Taylor Swift gets the sea shanty treatment - CNN

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Taylor Swift gets the sea shanty treatment  CNN The Link Lonk


January 31, 2021 at 02:47AM
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Taylor Swift gets the sea shanty treatment - CNN

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Sea

Quick Turnaround As Men's Golf Heads To Sea Best Invitational - FGCU Athletics

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Story Links

FORT MYERS, Fla. – After opening the season with a fourth-place finish at the Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate last week, the FGCU men's golf team is back in action this Monday and Tuesday as the Eagles head to the Sea Best Invitational hosted by Jacksonville. The tournament will be played at the TPC at Sawgrass Dye's Valley Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
 
Last week, Austin Cherichella led the Eagles with a second-place individual finish becoming just the 11^th freshman in program history to win or finish runner-up in a tournament. As a team, FGCU shot a 54-hole total of 853 which was the 13^th-lowest score in program history.
 
FGCU LINE-UP:

1. Frankie Capan III (North Oaks, Minn./Northwest Christian HS/Alabama)
2. Michael O'Brien (West Chester, Ohio/Archbishop Moeller HS/Saint Joseph's)
3. Thomas Salanito (Thomas Salanito (Palm Harbor, Fla./Clearwater Central Catholic)
4. Van Holmgren (Plymouth, Minn./Waysata HS/North Dakota State)
5. Austin Cherichella (Orlando, Fla./Lake Nona HS)

Individual - Brady Madsen (Raymond, Minn./MacCray HS/Winona State)
 
The 12-team field features sixTop-100 programs and will be a bit of an early preview of the ASUN Championship with five programs competing. Not all teams are ranked due to either not playing in the fall.
 
SEA BEST INVITATIONAL FIELD (Golfweek/GolfStat):
#20 / NR Liberty University
#26 / NR University of North Florida
#47 / NR Jacksonville University
#92 / NR Florida Gulf Coast University
#102 / NR Lipscomb University
#111 / NR University of South Carolina Upstate
NR / NR Campbell University
NR / NR Duke University
NR / NR North Carolina State University
NR / NR College of Charleston
NR / NR University of Charlotte
NR/ NR University of Toledo
  
The Eagles will have a break from competition until Feb. 19-21 when FGCU next heads to the Seminole Intercollegiate hosted by Florida State in Tallahassee.
 
 For complete coverage of the FGCU men's golf team, follow the Eagles on Twitter and Instagram at @FGCU_MGOLF and online at www.FGCUAthletics.com.  You can also sign-up to have news on FGCU men's golf and other programs delivered directly to your inbox by visiting www.fgcuathletics.com/email.

HEAD COACH ANDREW DANNA:
Danna will enter his second year at the helm of the men's golf program this fall. He served the previous season as the assistant at LSU. Prior to that he was the ultra-successful head coach for six years at Lynn University where he led them to the 2018 NCAA Division II national championship and was, subsequently, chosen the David Williams National Coach of the Year. He also led the Fighting Knights to three national runner-up placements, with a third and eighth place finish in his other two seasons.
 
E.A.G.L.E. CAMPAIGN
IT TAKES A TEAM to achieve our newest goal - a $10 million campaign to address student-athlete needs in continued academic success, life skills, mental health, nutrition, and strength and conditioning as well as departmental needs in facility expansion and improvement as well as mentoring and leadership training for coaches and staff. The name embodies our mission and the purpose of the E.A.G.L.E. Campaign - Eagle Athletics Generating Lifetime Excellence. Join Our Team and pledge your gift today to help the Eagles of tomorrow!
 
#FEEDFGCU
FGCU Athletics sponsors events in November and April to benefit the FGCU Campus Food Pantry (www.fgcu.edu/foodpantry) and the Harry Chapin Food Bank (https://ift.tt/1E0CJiI), FGCU Athletics' charities of choice. For more information, including how to make a contribution, please visit www.fgcu.edu/foodpantry and utilize the hashtag #FeedFGCU to help raise awareness.
 
ABOUT FGCU
FGCU teams have combined to win an incredible 82 conference regular season and tournament titles in just 13 seasons at the Division I level. Additionally, in just nine seasons of D-I postseason eligibility, the Eagles have had a combined 38 teams or individuals compete in NCAA championships, including three men's golfers. Seven FGCU programs have earned a top-25 national ranking in their respective sport – including women's basketball (#24, 2019-20) and both men's soccer (2018, 2019) and women's soccer (2018) as three of the most recent. In 2016-17, the Green and Blue posted a department-best sixth-place finish in the DI-AAA Learfield Directors' Cup and top-100 showing nationally, ahead of several Power-5 and FBS institutions. In 2018-19, the Eagles had an ASUN and state of Florida best seven teams earn the NCAA's Public Recognition Award for their Academic Progress Rate in their sport. In 2019-20, they ran their streak to three consecutive years leading both groups with the highest percentage of teams again receiving such high distinction (33% via 5 of 15 programs). FGCU also collectively earned a record 3.46 GPA in the classroom in the spring 2020 semester and has outperformed the general University undergraduate population for 22 consecutive semesters. The 2019 Fall and 2020 Spring semesters each saw another milestone reached as all 15 programs achieved a 3.0-or-higher team GPA. The Eagles also served an all-time high 7,200 volunteer hours in 2017 – being recognized as one of two runners-up for the inaugural NACDA Community Service Award presented by the Fiesta Bowl.
 
--FGCUATHLETICS.COM--
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

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January 30, 2021 at 09:37PM
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Quick Turnaround As Men's Golf Heads To Sea Best Invitational - FGCU Athletics

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Sea

Research suggests warmer oceans are killing sea stars in Puget... - Federal Way Mirror

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Recent research conducted at Cornell University might help us understand an illness that has decimated sea star populations for nearly a decade.

Melissa Miner, research associate in the Puget Sound for University of California, Santa Cruz, said Sea Star Wasting Syndrome (SSWS) has been confusing scientists and natural observers since it was first documented off the coast of the Olympic National Park around 2013.

People are shocked at how widespread the illness had become, she said, as SSWS has now been observed as far north as Alaska and as far south as Mexico with more than 20 species of echinoderms being affected thus far.

SSWS can be recognized by the lesions, often soft and oozing, on the flesh and tissue of an affected sea star. A sea star with SSWS can waste away in a matter of days as its limbs will eventually fall off.

Miner said SSWS has wiped out 70-100 percent of sea star populations in certain areas. In regions like the Salish Sea and the Puget Sound, she said young sea star populations are not showing recovery.

Sarah Gravem, research associate at Oregon State University, has been an ecological surveyor whose work has helped get the Sunflower Sea Star listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Her study utilized more than 61,000 surveys from across the West Coast and found that Sunflower Sea Star populations had decreased by more than 90 percent globally since the SSWD outbreak with an estimated 100 percent decline in Oregon and a 99 percent decline in Washington.

She said Sunflower Sea Stars used to be “common” and easy to find among beaches and intertidal zones across the West Coast.

“It is fairly clear that [SSWS] is the main driver,” Gravem said. “Without it, Sunflower Sea Stars would not be on the list.”

Gravem said sea stars are a keystone species in their marine ecosystems, meaning they play an important role in controlling and balancing the populations of other marine species.

For example, sea stars are an important predator of the sea urchin, which if unchecked will over-engorge themselves on kelp forests that Gravem said are already unhealthy amid warming water temperatures.

Not only are sea urchins more plentiful as SSWS kills off one of their main predators, but Gravem said the sea urchins also behave boldly and feed more aggressively on growing kelp.

“I don’t think we will see [sea stars] come back for decades,” she said. “And that’s not good for kelp.”

Warmer oceans?

Scientists and researchers have been working to understand the nature of this illness and its potential causes since the beginning of its outbreak.

Coincidentally, the SSWS began at a time where oceanic water temperatures were recorded at record highs. A 2016 study linked increased temperatures with increased symptoms of SSWS and faster rates of death for sea stars.

Warmer water temperatures were shown to exacerbate the effects of SSWS, but researchers like Gravem still believed SSWS was a disease caused by a transmissible pathogen and that warm waters were not the cause of the epidemic, but rather a factor that made it worse.

Cornell researcher Ian Hewson has been studying SSWS and trying to understand its cause for years. Hewson said he is at the point where he is convinced that it is not an infectious disease, and is more closely related to the changing conditions of the ocean.

Hewson admitted that SSWS “looks and smells” like a transmissible pathogenic event, but his experimentation suggests otherwise.

One experiment that he said excluded the possibility of a virus involved injecting the blended tissue of sea stars that had died of SSWS into healthy sea stars to see if they would contract the virus.

Hewson said the healthy sea stars did die, but despite viruses being more pronounced in infected tissues, there was no virus in the sea stars that they could associate with SSWS.

However, Hewson believes a more recent study of his might have helped unlock some understanding of what SSWS could be.

He said that extreme marine weather events beginning in 2013 brought water from deeper parts of the ocean to shallower marine habitats where sea stars were plentiful.

These waters originating from the ocean’s depths are rich with organic nutrients that phytoplankton love, and Hewson said this causes large algal blooms across the coast. Through the respiratory process, algae and phytoplankton release dissolved organic matter that attract microbial cultures.

Hewson said this drastic increase in microbial life creates low-oxygen dead zones not only around the sea stars’ habitat, but also on the surface of their bodies.

Sea stars, which diffuse oxygen through their skin, are left unable to breathe in the low-oxygen environment not only created by the increased microbial life, but also by the increase in water temperatures.

According to Hewson, the lesions and deterioration of tissues on the wasting sea stars are likely caused as the sea stars are deprived of enough oxygen for their metabolism to properly function.

The Link Lonk


January 31, 2021 at 04:30AM
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Research suggests warmer oceans are killing sea stars in Puget... - Federal Way Mirror

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Sea

US slams China’s ‘destabilising’ South China Sea military flights - Al Jazeera English

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US says Chinese military flights posed no threat to its Navy aircraft carrier but fit a pattern of aggressive behaviour by Beijing.

The US military has said that Chinese military flights in the past week in the South China Sea “at no time” posed any threat to a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group in the region, but fit a pattern of destabilising and aggressive behaviour by Beijing.

“The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group closely monitored all People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF) activity, and at no time did they pose a threat to US Navy ships, aircraft, or sailors,” the US military’s Pacific Command said in a statement.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese aircraft did not come within 250 nautical miles (463km) of the US Navy vessels.

China claims almost all the energy-rich waters of the South China Sea, where it has established military outposts on artificial islands. That claim has been declared as without legal basis by the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the sea.

The waters have also become a flashpoint in the Sino-US relationship.

The United States regularly accuses China of militarising the South China Sea and trying to intimidate Asian neighbours who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.

‘Freedom of navigation’

China, in turn, regularly bristles at US military activity in the region, saying on Monday that such actions are not conducive to peace and stability in the region.

The US Navy regularly conducts what it calls “freedom of navigation” operations by ships close to some of the islands China occupies, asserting freedom of access to international waterways, and in accordance with the 2016 ruling of The Hague.

The US Pacific Command renewed its pledge to continue operations in the region, where it has maintained long-running military alliances with China’s neighbours.

“The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, demonstrating resolve through our operational presence throughout the region,” Pacific Command said.

A Chinese naval helicopter prepares to land on board China’s frigate CNS Huangshan during exercises in the South China Sea in 2017 [Byron C Linder/US Navy handout via Reuters]

The latest run-in came just a week after China passed a new law that, for the first time, explicitly allows its coastguard to fire on foreign vessels that threaten its “national sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction”.

China’s coastguard is the most powerful force of its kind in the region.

On Friday, former Philippine justice and international maritime law expert, Antonio Carpio, told the Manila-based Rappler news website that the new China law renders the code of conduct being negotiated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)  as “dead on arrival”.

The Philippines has already formally lodged a diplomatic protest on the matter.

Carpio urged ASEAN to go to the UN and declare the new Chinese law as void.

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January 30, 2021 at 09:50AM
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US slams China’s ‘destabilising’ South China Sea military flights - Al Jazeera English

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Sea

Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Associated Press

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — There once was a tune that tickled the Internet’s fancy/When TikTok revived the humble sea shanty/The views came fast, the fad could last/Go, read about it go:

___

People are stuck at home, toiling away, getting bored, going stir crazy.

Cooped-up sailors who felt the same way on long ocean journeys broke up the tedium with work songs called sea shanties.

It only makes sense, then, that shanties have come full circle with a moment of unprecedented popularity during the pandemic.

“Times are tough. If we can sing, it’ll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships,” said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea shanties aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.

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TikTok helped sea shanties surge into the mainstream.

The app has a duet feature that lets people create a 60-second song and then allows others to add their voices.

People began using the feature to record sea shanties, and shantying quickly became a mainstream thing, starting last month. The ShantyTok movement has even contributed to a rendition by the Longest Johns of the centuries old “Wellerman” sailing into the United Kingdom’s Top 40 chart. Another version by Nathan Evans with a driving beat reached No. 2 at midweek.

The sudden popularity isn’t so hard to fathom. After all, people are craving interaction during the pandemic, and shanties are group efforts that don’t require great singing skills — though some of the TikToks are quite sophisticated and elaborate.

___

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

___

Shanties and sea songs are lumped together in the trend, but true shanties were work songs. Sailors of yore sang to pass the time and to coordinate their efforts in hoisting sails and anchors, and manning the bilge pumps.

They generally consist of a chorus — in “Wellerman,” it’s about a ship loaded with “sugar, tea and rum” — that’s easy to memorize. There might be formal lyrics, or participants might choose to ad lib, with others joining for the chorus, said Matthew Baya, a radio show host from Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The shanties helped sailors defuse tension and remain sane amid the cruelty of isolation and cramped quarters. Shanties sometimes involved good-natured insults at skippers or the shipping companies that employed them.

Vocal chops are a bonus, but not a necessity.

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“Not all sailors kept perfect pitch. They weren’t in that job for their musical talent,” Baya said. “You’ll get some people who are really talented, and other people who’re just having fun but may not hit all of the right notes.”

Many people who sing sea shanties at local festivals in Mystic, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts, and other seaport locations across the U.S. are thrilled by the sudden attention. Shanties are even more popular in some parts of Europe.

“If people are having fun singing, that’s got to be good,” said Baya, one of the hosts of the “Saturday Morning Coffee House” on WERU-FM in Blue Hill, Maine. His show often includes a shanty or two.

___

Many workers are stuck inside and alone/A sense of whimsy can throw them a bone/Because of that, the shanty trend has shone/So sing, sing as you go

___

Shanties tend to be associated with England, which ruled the seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But they’re sung from Maine, where English colonists began a shipbuilding tradition, to Massachusetts, home of the nation’s whaling fleet, down to Alabama’s Mobile Bay, the Caribbean and all the way around the world, Konesni said.

They’re work songs like the ones sung by enslaved people harvesting crops in the South, miners chipping away deep underground and loggers felling trees in the woods, all of which are seeing renewed attention thanks to shanties, said Konesni, who’s a cultural ambassador for the State Department and has performed shanties around the world.

The trend is a refreshing one in a world that has become accustomed to people performing on a stage for a crowd, Konesni said.

Shanties are different because they’re participatory. The audience is encouraged to boisterously sing along.

“It’s got a depth, history and singability that a lot of pop songs don’t,” he said.

Geoff Kaufman, who made a living singing sea shanties and directed the Sea Music Festival at the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, said he’s amused and intrigued by the sudden fascination with shanties.

He loves the idea of a new generation lifting their voices.

“I hope it brings more young people into the fold,” he said.

___

Long live the work song’s run/To bring us a sense of glee and fun/One day, when the pandemic is done/Back to the office we’ll go

___

Associated Press writer Mallika Sen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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January 29, 2021 at 01:11PM
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Sea shanties are having a moment amid isolation of pandemic - Associated Press

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U.S. military slams Chinese flights over South China Sea but says they posed no threat - Reuters

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By Phil Stewart, Yimou Lee

4 Min Read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday that Chinese military flights in the past week in the South China Sea fit a pattern of destabilizing and aggressive behavior by Beijing but posed no threat to a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group in the region.

FILE PHOTO: The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is pictured as it enters the port in Da Nang, Vietnam, March 5, 2020. REUTERS/Kham/File Photo

“The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group closely monitored all People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF) activity, and at no time did they pose a threat to U.S. Navy ships, aircraft, or sailors,” the U.S. military’s Pacific Command said in a statement.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese aircraft did not come within 250 nautical miles (460 km) of the U.S. Navy vessels.

Taiwan reported that several Chinese air force aircraft flew into the southwestern corner of its air defense identification zone last weekend, near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, including fighter jets and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers.

Regional security and diplomatic sources familiar with the situation said China’s air force was dispatched on missions beginning mid-morning on Jan. 23, coinciding with the U.S. carrier group passing south of the Pratas.

China, which has long geared its military towards defending itself against the United States, was conducting exercises that would simulate an operation against an aircraft carrier, the sources said.

“They purposely conducted the drills when the U.S. carrier was passing through the Bashi Channel,” one source said, referring to the waterway between southern Taiwan and the northern Philippines.

“That was not just meant for Taiwan. Most importantly, China is trying to tackle the issue of the South China Sea: it wants to stop the U.S. military from entering the South China Sea. China wants to diminish the United States’ weight in the western Pacific.”

The sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, the ministry toughened its language towards Chinese-claimed Taiwan, warning after last weekend’s stepped-up military activity near the island that “independence means war” and that its armed forces were acting in response to provocation and foreign interference.

China claims almost all the energy-rich waters of the South China Sea, where it has established military outposts on artificial islands. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the sea.

The waters have become a flashpoint in the Sino-U.S. relationship. Washington regularly accuses Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea and trying to intimidate Asian neighbors who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.

China, in turn, regularly bristles at U.S. military activity in the region, saying on Monday that such actions are not conducive to peace and stability in the region.

The U.S. Navy regularly conducts “freedom of navigation” operations by ships close to some of the islands China occupies, asserting freedom of access to international waterways.

The U.S. Pacific Command renewed its pledge to continue operations in the region.

“The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, demonstrating resolve through our operational presence throughout the region,” Pacific Command said.

Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Yimou Lee in Taipei; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei, and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Leslie Adler, Grant McCool and William Mallard

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January 30, 2021 at 07:02AM
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Harry, The Maldivian Sea Turtle, Needs Your Help - Forbes

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As you plan your post-pandemic travels, here’s a way to help bring some of the benefits of tourism to the dream destination of the Maldives—by adopting a sea turtle.

Hawksbill Turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata, Maldives, Indian Ocean, Meemu Atoll (Photo by Reinhard ... [+] Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

ullstein bild via Getty Images

A sick turtle named Harry

An adult male Hawksbill turtle was found floating unusually near the Maldives’ Alif Alif Atoll in December 2020. Though he didn’t appear to have any external wounds, he didn’t have the strength to swim.

With the help of a supply boat and two speed boats, and despite two days of very bad weather, the turtle eventually arrived at the Olive Ridley Project’s marine turtle rescue center on the Baa Atoll. The turtle, given the name Harry, received x-rays, pain medication, and antibiotics—plus treats of squid to entice him to eat. So far, he’s had only modest improvements. After two surgeries, Harry is now getting fed blended fish via a tube twice a day as veterinarians try to diagnosis his mysterious illness.

A two-bedroom water villa at Patina Maldives, Fari Islands

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands’ support of sea turtles

Harry came to my attention thanks to a brand new Maldives resort, called Patina Maldives, Fari Islands, which will open in May 2021. The resort has a partnership with the Olive Ridley Project (ORP) to protect the Maldives’ sea turtles and their habitat.

MORE FOR YOU

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands is a resort on next-door islands in the Maldives’ North Atoll. It’s about 20 minutes by speedboat from Velana International Airport and 50 minutes from Malé International Airport. The well-being of the earth, its waters, and all its inhabitants is important to Patina Maldives, Fari Islands. The five-star resort is aimed at guests who seek a meaningful connection with the world and with themselves, and creates experiences to fulfill that.

The islands and overwater villas of the Patina Maldives, Fari Islands resort, set to open May 2021 ... [+] in the Maldives' North Atoll

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands

The property has 90 villas and 20 studios that exude serenity. Designed by Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan, the resort has an elegant, modern, and minimalist look, quite different from many other properties in the region. Accommodations feature luxe furnishings, original art, outdoor bathtubs, hammocks, private pools, and a floor-to-ceiling window system that allows villas to be open to the views on three sides. You can choose from one to three bedrooms and choose to be on the beach or “floating” over the crystal clear ocean (perhaps with a healthy turtle swimming by).

Guests at the sustainably-built Patina Maldives, Fari Islands can learn more about marine conservation and wildlife via several resort initiatives. For example, there’s a coral seeding program to protect and build up habitat for a wide variety of undersea life. Kids have free scuba diving lessons to get up close and personal with underwater Maldives. And, of course, guests can “adopt” a turtle, learn more about the threats they face, and why it’s important for the ORP to track and photo-ID the turtles of the Indian Ocean.

The Maldives, above and below the sea

getty

The Olive Ridley Project

The Indian Ocean that surrounds the 1,192 islands of the Maldives is rich in sea life. But, as in many of the world’s waterways, there are also hazards for those animals. Turtles are at particular risk of getting tangled in and injured by ghost gear—lost and abandoned fishing nets. Some turtles die from exhaustion or dehydration as they try to free themselves. Others have severe injuries that can include deep cuts that might mean the loss of a flipper.

Dr. Martin Stelfox, a biologist curious about injured turtles in the Maldives, founded the Olive Ridley Project in 2013. Named for one of the five species of sea turtles found in the Maldives, ORP is a registered charity in England and Wales. Over the years, it expanded its mandate to protect sea turtles and their habitats in the Maldives as well as in Kenya, Oman, and Pakistan.

Baby olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea).

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The ORP has two marine turtle rescue centers within the Maldives that provide veterinary care to injured turtles. Some can be rehabilitated well enough that they are released back to the ocean.

Adopt Harry, Azura, Xena or another sea turtle

At the Olive Ridley Project’s Adopt a Turtle Patient website, pick the turtle that you’d like to symbolically adopt and make a donation of a minimum of 50 pounds (about $68 US; your credit card company or Paypal will do the conversion). You can adopt a turtle patient who needs extra help or one of the newly-identified turtles in OPR’s database. You might even get to give it a name.

This critically endangered Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) is entangled in discarded ... [+] fishing nets. The animal was found alive but without help would likely die. The turtle was untangled and released after this photo was taken.

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Whether as a gift or for yourself, you’ll soon receive an adoption certificate, a website link to keep progress on the health of your turtle, and the good feeling that your donation is helping heal creatures like Harry and protect their Indian Ocean habitat.

You’ll then be ready to plan your post-pandemic dream trip to the Maldives with a stay at Patina Maldives, Fari Islands.

Adoption certificate and a photo of a sick Hawksbill turtle named Harry

Olive Ridley Project, Maldives

The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 07:51AM
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Harry, The Maldivian Sea Turtle, Needs Your Help - Forbes

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We’re stuck at home, toiling away. So, it makes sense that sea shanties are going mainstream - OregonLive

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There once was a tune that tickled the Internet’s fancy

When TikTok revived the humble sea shanty

The views came fast, the fad could last

Go, read about it go:

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — People are stuck at home, toiling away, getting bored, going stir crazy. Cooped-up sailors who felt the same way on long ocean journeys broke up the tedium with work songs called sea shanties.

It only makes sense, then, that shanties have come full circle with a moment of unprecedented popularity during the pandemic.

“Times are tough. If we can sing, it’ll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships,” said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea shanties aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.

TikTok helped sea shanties surge into the mainstream.

The app has a duet feature that lets people create a 60-second song and then allows others to add their voices.

People began using the feature to record sea shanties, and shantying quickly became a mainstream thing, starting last month. The ShantyTok movement has even contributed to a rendition by the Longest Johns of the centuries old “Wellerman” sailing into the United Kingdom’s Top 40 chart. Another version by Nathan Evans with a driving beat reached No. 2 at midweek.

The sudden popularity isn’t so hard to fathom. After all, people are craving interaction during the pandemic, and shanties are group efforts that don’t require great singing skills — though some of the TikToks are quite sophisticated and elaborate.

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Long live the work song’s run

To bring us a sense of glee and fun

One day, when the pandemic is done

Back to the office we’ll go

___

Shanties and sea songs are lumped together in the trend, but true shanties were work songs. Sailors of yore sang to pass the time and to coordinate their efforts in hoisting sails and anchors, and manning the bilge pumps.

They generally consist of a chorus — in “Wellerman,” it’s about a ship loaded with “sugar, tea and rum” — that’s easy to memorize. There might be formal lyrics, or participants might choose to ad lib, with others joining for the chorus, said Matthew Baya, a radio show host from Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The shanties helped sailors defuse tension and remain sane amid the cruelty of isolation and cramped quarters. Shanties sometimes involved good-natured insults at skippers or the shipping companies that employed them.

Vocal chops are a bonus, but not a necessity.

“Not all sailors kept perfect pitch. They weren’t in that job for their musical talent,” Baya said. “You’ll get some people who are really talented, and other people who’re just having fun but may not hit all of the right notes.”

Many people who sing sea shanties at local festivals in Mystic, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts, and other seaport locations across the U.S. are thrilled by the sudden attention. Shanties are even more popular in some parts of Europe.

“If people are having fun singing, that’s got to be good,” said Baya, one of the hosts of the “Saturday Morning Coffee House” on WERU-FM in Blue Hill, Maine. His show often includes a shanty or two.

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Many workers are stuck inside and alone

A sense of whimsy can throw them a bone

Because of that, the shanty trend has shone

So sing, sing as you go

___

Shanties tend to be associated with England, which ruled the seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. But they’re sung from Maine, where English colonists began a shipbuilding tradition, to Massachusetts, home of the nation’s whaling fleet, down to Alabama’s Mobile Bay, the Caribbean and all the way around the world, Konesni said.

They’re work songs like the ones sung by enslaved people harvesting crops in the South, miners chipping away deep underground and loggers felling trees in the woods, all of which are seeing renewed attention thanks to shanties, said Konesni, who’s a cultural ambassador for the State Department and has performed shanties around the world.

The trend is a refreshing one in a world that has become accustomed to people performing on a stage for a crowd, Konesni said.

Shanties are different because they’re participatory. The audience is encouraged to boisterously sing along.

“It’s got a depth, history and singability that a lot of pop songs don’t,” he said.

Geoff Kaufman, who made a living singing sea shanties and directed the Sea Music Festival at the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, said he’s amused and intrigued by the sudden fascination with shanties.

He loves the idea of a new generation lifting their voices.

“I hope it brings more young people into the fold,” he said.

___

Long live the work song’s run

To bring us a sense of glee and fun

One day, when the pandemic is done

Back to the office we’ll go

___

-- The Associated Press

The Link Lonk


January 30, 2021 at 02:13AM
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We’re stuck at home, toiling away. So, it makes sense that sea shanties are going mainstream - OregonLive

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